Terms such as ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’, ‘socialist’, ‘libertarian’, ‘nationalist’, ‘green’ are often used, but not always in line with the thinking of ardent advocates who embrace those labels themselves. Furthermore, the advocates with a shared label can nonetheless hold quite different views as to what is actually covered by that label. The same is true of the label ‘communitarian’. While the term has become more widely used in political writings, less attention has been given to what it is meant to convey by its core advocates. What is set out below is a brief timeline indicating who have been most closely associated with that label, and when their distinctive ideas emerged.
Owenite & Cooperative Advocates of Communitarian Experiments (early/mid-19th century)
Robert Owen (1771-1858) pioneered new ways to enable people to live and work together in cooperative communities. He set out his ideas in A New View of Society (1813) and other publications, and experimented with socio-economic projects at New Lanark (Britain) and New Harmony (the US). His distinctive experiments in promoting mutual respect, sharing out resources fairly, and providing education and social security for all, led some commentators to coin the term ‘communitarian’ to refer to what he was putting forward in theory and practice. Many who were inspired by Owen went on to experiment further in devising democratic and inclusive forms of community relations – e.g., the Rochdale Pioneers (1844) paved the way for the cooperative movement.
Thinkers who Developed Communitarian Approaches to Political Philosophy and Social Reforms (late 19th/early 20th century)
After the term ‘communitarian’ was revived in the 1980s/1990s (see the next two sections), a number of experts on late 19th/early 20th century thinkers observed that some of these ought to be recognised as key communitarian theorists. The most notable figures in this context are Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), John Dewey (1859-1952), and the New Liberals [such as L. T. Hobhouse (1864-1929) and John Hobson (1858-1940)] (as explained by Mark Cladis, Alan Ryan, and David Weinstein respectively). A similar case can be made for Leon Bourgeois (1851-1925) who, like Durkheim, developed the notion of solidarity to map out an alternative to callous laissez faire and rigid collectivism); and Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) whose writings on the importance of advancing cooperative community relations guided thinking on organisation as Dewey’s did for education. [It should be noted that Ferdinand Tönnies is often superficially read as a communitarian who argued for Gemeinschaft (traditional hierarchical community) against Gesellschaft (loose association of self-interested individuals). Tönnies was in fact criticised by Durkheim who set out a genuinely cogent communitarian conception of community that is neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft.]
The Communitarian Critics of John Rawls (1980s)
In the 1970s the most prominent defence of social justice and liberal support for the disadvantaged was that put forward by John Rawls in Theory of Justice (1972). However, Rawls’ arguments relied on ideas which abstracted individuals and their moral understanding from all connections with the wider community. This led to a series of criticisms that emerged in the 1980s: Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981) and Whose Justice? Which Responsibility? (1988); Michael Sandel Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982); Michael Walzer Spheres of Justice (1983) and Interpretation and Social Criticism (1987); and Charles Taylor Philosophical Papers (1985) and Sources of the Self(1989). The critics of Rawls came to be referred in academic circles as ‘communitarians’. None of them subscribes to conservative politics, and all of them are critical of right-wing libertarianism espoused by the likes of Robert Nozick.
The Proponents of Communitarian Ideas (late 20th/early 21st century)
In contrast to the communitarian critics of Rawls who are ambivalent about the describing their own ideas as ‘communitarian’, from around 1990 on, a range of British and American writers argued explicitly for what they termed as ‘communitarian’ positions. Both David Miller and David Marquand put forward ideas for the communitarian reorientation of socialism towards a cooperative vision of society.
Jonathan Bowell, who counted Durkheim as one of his key influences, expounded what he termed ‘democratic communitarianism’, a term Robert Bellah was to welcome and adopt himself in his writings on social development. Elinor Ostrom argued for a communitarian approach to local government. To ensure there was no mistaking his political stance, Charles Derber set out his ideas on ‘left communitarianism’. Philip Selznick, steeped in Dewey’s philosophy, developed in detail what he called ‘liberal communitarian’ thinking, a term which would also be used by a student of his, Amitai Etzioni, who went on to establish the Communitarian Network. Reflecting these related currents, Henry Tam set out the core arguments in Communitarianism: a new agenda for politics and citizenship (1998), and traced their historical development in The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas (2019).
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Note
Thinkers who have been most closely associated with the coining of the term ‘communitarian’ (the Owenites and cooperative pioneers during the 19th century) and its revival in the 1980s (the often cited ‘communitarian critics of Rawls’); as well as theorists who explicitly refer to their ideas as ‘communitarian’ (all those mentioned in the section on late 20th/early 21st century) and the key figures who influenced them (Dewey, Durkheim, etc), are without exception antipathic towards both oppressive traditional hierarchies and atomistic free-for-all individualism. No notable conservative writer has presented their own ideas as ‘communitarian’. While some commentators like to refer to non-liberal East Asian societies as ‘communitarian’, that is not based on any intellectual or theoretical usage that is actually connected with that term. There are progressives who want to distance themselves from communitarian thoughts because they are misconceived as ‘illiberal’ or right-wing. In fact, communitarians are the amongst the most progressive of liberal, social democratic, and cooperative advocates.
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